say that Lovelace has a gentlemanly
manner is not to say that he is a gentleman, but only that he has caught
the trick of a gentleman. To call him or Robert Macaire or Richard Turpin a
gentleman is to say only that he behaves as a gentleman behaves. But he is
not a gentleman, unless that word describes manners and nothing more.

This is the key to the question of Apollodorus. It is not easy to define a
gentleman, but it is perfectly easy to see that in his pleasures and in the
little indifferent practices of society the gentleman will do nothing which
is disagreeable to others. He certainly will not assume that a personal
gratification or indulgence must necessarily be pleasant to others, nor
will he make the selfish habits of others a plea for his own.

Apollodorus listened patiently, and then said slowly that he understood the
judgment to be that a gentleman would smoke in the presence of ladies only
when he knew that it was agreeable to them, but that, as the infinite grace
and courtesy of women often led them, as an act of self-denial, to persuade
themselves that what others wish to do ought not to annoy them, it was very
difficult to know whether the practice was or was not offensive to any
particular lady, and therefore--therefore--

The youth seemed to be unable to draw the conclusion.

"Therefore," said the mentor, "it is well to remember the old rule in
whist."

"Which is--?" asked Apollodorus.

"When in doubt, trump the trick."

"But what is the special application of that rule to this case?"

"Precisely this, that the doubting smoker should follow the advice of
_Punch_ to those about to marry."

"Which is--?" asked Apollodorus.

"Don't."

(_September_, 1883)

DUELLING

Twenty-five years ago, at the table of a gentleman whose father had fallen
in a duel, the conversation fell upon duelling, and after it had proceeded
for some time the host remarked, emphatically, that there were occasions
when it was a man's solemn duty to fight. The personal reference was too
significant to permit further insistence at that table that duelling was
criminal folly, and the subject of conversation was changed.

The host, however, had only reiterated the familiar view of General
Hamilton. His plea was, that in the state of public opinion at the time
when Burr challenged him, to refuse to fight under circumstances which
by the "code of honor" authorized a challenge, was to accept a brand of
cowardice and of a want of gentlemanly feeling, which would banish him to a
moral and social Coventry, and throw a cloud of discredit upon his family.
So Hamilton, one of the bravest men and one of the acutest intellects of
his time, permitted a worthless fellow to murder him. Yet there is no doubt
that he stated accurately the general feeling of the social circle in which
he lived. There was probably not a conspicuous member of that society who
was of military antecedents who would not have challenged any man who had
said of him what Hamilton had said of Burr. Hamilton disdained explanation
or recantation, and the result was accepted as tragical, but in a certain
sense inevitable.

Yet that result aroused public sentiment to the atrocity of this barbarous
survival of the ordeal of private battle. That one of the most justly
renowned of public men, of unsurpassed ability, should be shot to death
like a mad dog, because he had expressed the general feeling about an
unprincipled schemer, was an exasperating public misfortune. But that he
should have been murdered in deference to a practice which was approved in
the best society, yet which placed every other valuable life at the mercy
of any wily vagabond, was a public peril. From that day to this there has
been no duel which could be said to have commanded public sympathy or
approval. From the bright June morning, eighty years ago, when Hamilton
fell at Weehawken, to the June of this year, when two foolish men shot at
each